The biggest myth is that confidence comes from toughing it out. Sooner or later toughing it out bites you on the butt and that’s not only applicable to the horse world.
It was fake news…
That looks like a pretty cool photo hey? I’m doing something that looks quite spectacular, riding a pony club obstacle course bareback and bridle-less in the middle of a vast open space. That photo was literally fake news.
As so often happens with the photos and videos that we see of other people, what you’re seeing from the outside was not what was going on in the inside. It was the first time I was out of the round yard, I was ignoring my nerves and the only reason I got away with it was the generosity of that wonderful Caretaker horse who turned himself inside out to look after me.
Back then I didn’t understand how to use my nervousness to BE safe and feel safe. I didn’t understand how to help my horse to feel safe, so even with this generous Caretaker horse I was adding his nerves onto my nerves, which eventually ended up in whopping resistance and a giant melt down that brought both of us to a screeching halt for a couple of years.
My body and mind couldn’t tell the difference between fear and excitement which compounded the fear and tension. I was constantly driving myself deeper into fear to do the things that I needed to do to pass my exams – I sooo badly wanted to be really good with horses. The nerves were so bad that I coped by blocking them out. Then the tension caused by that fear got so bad that I used to take 2 Panadeine Forte before I got in the saddle or I’d be in too much pain to get off afterwards. The back pain and the headaches… mannn…
Yes, most of the horse world…
For most of what you’re watching in the horse world (and probably elsewhere as well), what you see in public is not what’s going on in private. For those of you who are nervous riders you’re in very good company. VAST numbers of riders are experiencing nerves in all the ways that they experience them – whether that’s in low key anxiety, tension, stuck or explosive energy, worry worry worry, or even dread that they’re pushing themselves through. I’ve worked with a world champion (her interview is on the website here but I won’t distract you with it right now) and an Olympian who were both in the same boat and for exactly the same reason as you. People just show it differently. They weren’t safe either.
Contrary to how we’ve been taught to act, it’s not useful to “be brave”, to “get back on that horse” “it’ll get better if you can just screw your courage up to practice more”. We can tell from the horrific accident and injury rate in the horse world that very few people understand how to make themselves safe with horses hey? In our community with their magnetic riding seats and happy co-operative horses it’s rare for someone to fall off a horse.
Here’s 4 very good reasons for being a nervous rider:
- Your survival instinct is sending alarm bells to tell you that you’re not safe.
- You’re feeling your horse’s fear yelling at you and if your horse is that afraid, that means you’re not safe either. I’ll take this moment to point out that this is what makes nervous riders brilliant riders when they learn how to take action on their nerves.
- Your riding seat isn’t sucked into the saddle, so you’re not safe.
- You’ve had one or more falls, your riding seat has got tension in it, you’re no longer sucked into the saddle and you’re no longer safe.
Starting to get the picture? Sometimes I find myself doing a little stamping tantrum at my computer. Until you’re out in expanded consciousness and can create a different experience for yourself, fear is a very good deal when you’re not safe. We are not “less than” when we’re afraid or anxious – we’re feeling what we’re meant to be feeling and when we take action on it, it simply disappears.
The worst thing you can do is to go bulldozing through your fear or anxiety.
We’re simply supposed to use fear to make ourselves safe. That’s what it’s designed for and when we listen and understand it – pfft – that’s the speed of it disappearing. If this is your first time here, I PROMISE you, fear disappears that fast. Come into a live event and experience it for yourself.
Ignoring our nerves, dumbing them down – allowing someone else to dumb us down – numbing them off or bulldozing through them might work in the very short term, but it bites us on the butt pretty soon. Each unaddressed fear makes the next one bigger. Until the next thing you know, you don’t want to get on your horse any more or worse still, give up on these glorious creatures who have so much to give us.
Big nerves, anxiety, dread, explosions – these are the escalated versions of fear when our inner self, our soul is reduced to screaming at us.
When we make feeling safe a priority, when we and our horse feel safe, it opens up all those glorious experiences that are the reason we yearned for horses in the first place.
We are MASTERS at experiencing you into feeling wonderful with your horses here. There’s a tiny clue right there about what’s coming.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, …
I’ve been leading up to something special for a while now and knowing that there’s a simple practical solution for rider’s nervousness is only one of them. So far we’ve covered:
The healing for horses that is far beyond normal veterinary practice. I love it when vets combine all their wonderful knowledge with this.
How unaddressed worries screw up our ability to create what we want. My hilarious rain dance may or may not have been an example of that.
The profoundly powerful role that anger can play in the practical creation of what we want. Celtic Peace’s story. These days we understand the difference between a dirty kind of anger that’s destructive and a clean feeling that I call Heart Anger that understands all the threads of what’s happening and creates change so fast your head will spin.
Say goodbye to spooking horses – spooking horses are not normal – they were created by being handled with fear and stress that became chronic for them. You’ll find keys to success in this blog.
Neck pain nightmare – the surprising emotional culprit behind a crick in your neck that means we can solve it very very fast.
Let’s bring a little horse magic into some big upsets – our willingness to understand others is the key to our miraculous ability to solve even the most difficult problems, change even dire situations and influence even the crappiest behavior to improve.
Solving a horse’s very serious problems – Sunny’s feet training story from lethal to liberty – talking about what would have happened if I’d used techniques to get her to pick that foot up. The tension and anguish from that experience would still have been stuck in there, the PTSD reaction of it would have bitten us on the bum whenever anything went wrong with trimming.
Shake off old frights and injuries – there’s a riding seat that feels like it’s so sucked into the saddle, that you can flow with your horse pretty much no matter what’s happening. This lesson is just one of the innovative things that we do here that makes that beautiful riding seat a reality, really fast.
Tips for stress reduction in emergencies – the same release, inner peace and joy that we experience when we discover and use our Feel for our horse, is the same release, inner peace and joy that we experience when we understand our inner guidance in the rest of their lives – even in emergencies. Here’s a practical understanding of how we can find inner peace no matter what’s going on around us and how you can use that to prepare your horses for an emergency.
His riding went back to the ease of his childhood – you won’t find this anywhere else in the world – the ability to re-program your instinctive reactions so they get you out of trouble instead of into it.
Horses DO love us – a story of the day Bobby died and the love that he blazed at me for two hours.
